


Dark Nebula

by elDiablito



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Universe, Gen, Headcanon, Implication of sexual violence, Multi, Post-Season/Series 02, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-18
Updated: 2017-02-18
Packaged: 2018-09-25 02:18:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9798152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elDiablito/pseuds/elDiablito
Summary: After Zarkon's battle with the Paladins plunges the him into a comatose state, Haggar must be reacquainted with the heavy history between her and the Emperor by the opening of an old wound: Prince Lotor's return from exile.





	

At some moment in the dark expanse of ten thousand years, Haggar’s heart had calcified, had hardened. What was once raw and hot eventually cooled to reinforce an injured structure like healed bone. Her heart did not feel but her head remembered what “feeling” meant; a battalion of emotions were lined up in her mind to be summoned by name.

 

_You are sorrow. You are rage. You are regret._

 

Looking down upon Zarkon’s body, the warm pink light of Quintessence flowing into him enveloping them both, Haggar wondered, _What emotion is this?_

 

As she turned away from the emperor, the emotions in her battalion shifted about in their mental queue with unease. When she left the healing chamber, she found the Galra commanders awaiting her orders, standing by with battle-ready poise. She leveled her yellow gaze at them, sensing Zarkon’s unconscious presence from behind closed doors like breath on the back of her neck. Even after 10,000 years, she marveled that she still recognized this feeling.

 

_You are shame._

 

“Summon Prince Lotor,” she said, voice bursting, unbidden, in a solar flare from her throat.

 

The words burned as they left.

 

***     *     ***

 

As she approached the arched double doors, their metal surface inscribed with the glowing Galra seal, Haggar noted the absence of sentries who were meant to be guarding them. She scowled and held a hand before the control panel on the wall to be scanned.

 

When the doors of the bed chamber slid open with a metallic whirr, Haggar first took in the luminescence of billions of stars scattered across the expanse of window. This view covered the far wall, white light puncturing a tapestry of red gases that poured over the velvet black of space. Like a dark tear through this panorama of stars, an elegant silhouette stood poised at the center of the window, his back to the door.

 

"You may enter," came a voice, rough as a tongue against bare flesh.

 

Haggar stepped forward. The doors drew closed behind her and annihilated the purple glow of the corridor's lamps. Dim red light swallowed her inside the bed chamber and illumined the edges of Prince Lotor's figure like an ember. He shifted slightly in Haggar's direction as she entered, nude but more unaffected than any soldier in full armor.

 

Haggar dipped into a low bow. "Your Highness.”

 

Her eyes met the prince's as he appraised her, his own as golden and opaque as Quintessence glowing behind glass. Satisfied--or perhaps unimpressed--by what he saw, he lifted a glass of iridescent pink liquid to his lips, free hand resting on a bare hip.

 

"Must be dire straits for you to summon me, Haggar," Lotor said with a chuckle, the sound slick with bitterness. The razors of his teeth gleamed below cheeks still flushed with sex.

 

"Your father," Haggar said as she rose, trailing off.

 

She took in the whole of the room, averting her attention from the prince long enough to examine the bed set against one end of the chamber. The platform of dark blankets and pillows was disheveled but occupied. Haggar suppressed a sigh as she discerned the forms of the very soldiers who were meant to be on duty--ordered to both protect the prince and ensure he stayed behind closed doors until she commanded otherwise. One of the soldiers was snoring, the other shifted in his sleep as though disturbed by their speaking, but Lotor either didn't care or didn't notice.

 

"My father, what?" Lotor said.

 

In the effusive red light, Haggar could just make out the pale topography of scars on the purple landscape of his back and arms, flesh violated by the kiss of enemy blades. How many of those scars tallied the years between now and their last meeting...? She closed her eyes and collected herself.

 

"Your father," she began again. "Is in critical condition. You have been summoned here to finish what he started: capturing Voltron."

 

Lotor's body, moments ago supple as heated metal, visibly tensed. Haggar flinched at his change in demeanor; she couldn't help but recall what could come with this shift in mood.

 

The image flickered her mind: a Galra officer lying prone on his back, face an unrecognizable pulp of fur and teeth and blood.

 

To her relief, Lotor only squared his shoulders and beckoned her to come closer with a long, clawed finger. She approached and held out to him a black data chip smaller than the palm of her hand.

 

"Records for you to review," she said.

 

After sparing her narrow glance, he retrieved the chip and walked to a control pillar further down the wall of windows. By now, the soldiers in the bed were waking to the sound of voices and movement, and Haggar grimaced as one of them rose up, rubbed his eyes, and blinked at the dark room.

 

"Uh, your Highness?" the soldier said, his mohawk of white hair sticking out at odd angles.

 

And then he saw Haggar.

 

Lotor turned around in time to watch with a grin as the one soldier shook the other awake. In a flurry of bedding, they scrambled to their feet and grabbed their uniforms that lay scattered on the floor but took no time to dress. They all but ran toward the door. The Druid began to call out a promise for punishment, but Lotor interrupted her with a cackle.

 

"Bye, boys," the prince said, lifting his glass to them as they scurried out of his chambers.

 

"My apologies, your Highness," Haggar said. "For their...apparent incompetence."

 

Lotor graced her with a wide smile, taking pleasure in how scandalized she seemed by the spectacle of soldiers fleeing a prince's bed. Without comment, he returned his attention to the digital display at the top of the control pillar.

 

After a few deft strokes, a screen of red and purple frames of Galra language burst into bright life across the center panel of the window. He lifted a hand to the glass, which was now responsive to his motion as he searched for a file and opened it with a swipe of the hand. Information poured across the screen, a collage of images and data that Lotor's bright eyes drank in.

 

At this proximity, Lotor loomed over Haggar, not nearly as tall as Zarkon but no less imposing. Disheveled white hair flooded over the expanse of his shoulders, framed his face with strands pale as comet tails. The cool hue of his skin, the slight jut of his jaw, and the harsh gleam of his eyes marked him as Zarkon's son.

 

Haggar couldn’t quite reconcile this fully grown and cold Lotor with the image of him she held in her mind: the way he had drawn others to him like a black hole when he was a child, charismatic one moment but destructive the next. He had been radiant just as black holes are radiant, haloed with the light of devoured stars.

 

Though the Galra race was not one to prize aesthetics above strength, Lotor's beauty had always been arresting. And inexplicable. Wherever he wandered, on ships or in palaces, Lotor was followed by a wake of stares and whispers, all swirling around the same question: _is he really one of us?_

 

All too soon, the young prince had become aware that the attention he drew was not for the sight of a bright star but a monstrosity. And as his mentor, Haggar had played audience to his subsequent, spectacular implosion.

 

Unaware of Haggar's study of him, Lotor sipped at his drink as he browsed the images of the Voltron Paladins and their lions.  

 

"So, this is Voltron," he said. "How ugly. I can’t believe my father was once a pilot of this garbage."

 

With a grimace like he had bitten into something rotten, Lotor swiped through the images until one caught his eye.

 

"Oh, what's this?" he said, pinching then opening his fingers above a picture of all five Paladins in uniform, an aerial shot angled so that the pilots for the red, black, and blue lions were at the foreground. "Who's that _fetching_ one in the black?"

 

Haggar said, "The Black Paladin, like the others, is for you to annihilate not....fraternize with."

 

Lotor chewed the rim of his glass with a smile. "I'm not sure why those things must be mutually exclusive."

 

"The guards weren't satisfactory?" Haggar said, realizing a beat late that she had in fact spoken aloud. She braced herself for wrath, but Lotor only swung his gaze toward her, amused.

 

"Of course not, Haggar. You can't conquer what can't say no."

 

A chill ran down her spine.

 

_The young prince had never arrived for his training with the Druids, a repeated absence that had transcended disrespectful to worrisome. Haggar had seen his devolution from bright, diligent student of magic to a bitter creature, frustrated with the meditative training of the Druids and itching for physical interaction--violent or otherwise._

 

_After scouring the labyrinthine halls of the warship, Haggar had stumbled upon them in a side corridor. She heard the dripping of blood before she discerned their shapes in the shadows._

 

_Crouched above an officer lying sprawled on the floor, the young prince had seen Haggar and risen to his feet. A constellation of blood splattered his face, blood dripped from his knuckles, blood matted his white hair. He stood over the body like a colossus._

 

_“He called me 'Altean jail-bait,’” Lotor had said, as though commenting on the weather or his night's sleep. His uniform was torn open at the front like an autopsy incision, one sleeve hanging limp to expose a shoulder branded with the raw crescent of a bite mark. ”I told him I didn't like that.”_

 

"Did you know, Haggar," Lotor said with a gentle smile on his lips, interrupting her thoughts. “That humans have a greater number of pain receptors compared to Galra by about a power of ten? Can you imagine? They must be so sensitive...”

 

He swept a hand over the window then, and the red and purple screens vanished in a shower of pixels, plunging them both back into deep red light.

 

“I will capture Voltron,” Lotor said. “And strangle each Paladin with my bare hands if necessary.”

 

Haggar watched him as he padded across the glossy floor toward the bed, lifted a long, silk robe from the ground, and pulled it on with a flourish.

 

“But first," he said, knocking back the remnants of whatever was in his glass then walking back toward Haggar. "I see my father."

 

Lotor stood before the Druid, robe open to reveal an expanse of muscle and a trail of fine white hair that led to his groin. A thick scar bisected his stomach like the dark, jagged edge of a mountain range across evening sky. Every plane and curve of exposed skin was overwritten with battle history. His nudity was not erotic but defiant, threatening, an exclamation of physical strength that dared Haggar to object him. She challenged him anyway.

 

"Your Highness, I do not think now is the time--"

 

"Excuse me?" he said, lip pulling up in a sneer. "I didn't ask for your opinion, witch. You will take me to see Zarkon."

 

She took a breath and gathered herself; she would willingly bow beneath Zarkon's will, but to show weakness to Lotor now, before he had even ascended to the throne, would only make her life more treacherous from here on out.

 

"Prince Lotor, he is not in the condition to receive--"

 

A crash interrupted her as Lotor hurled his glass at the window. It shattered outward like a supernova, shards catching the starlight and raining to the floor. Lotor's chest heaved, heavy breaths blowing from his nostrils as though he were ready to exhale fire.

 

"I am not a pet," he hissed, "to be locked in a cage and released at your convenience.”

 

Haggar trembled as Lotor bent at the waist, hands on his hips, to peer at her face. She had been protected by the shadow of her hood before now, but lowering himself to her level, he could see her fully. And she could see him.

 

Her eyes scoured a countenance hardened by time but unforgettable: the sharp, straight nose; the deep pink grooves that cut over his eyes and trailed down his face as though tears had corroded flesh along the way; the ears that protruded to dramatic points; the thick white hair that framed his livid face like a curtain of moonlight.

 

In manor and malice, he was his father's son, but this face was unmistakably Altean.

 

_You are sorrow. You are rage._

 

“I have waited in exile for too fucking long to be kept waiting. You will escort me to Zarkon,” the prince murmured. “Or I will step over your body as I find my own way.”

 

_You are regret._

 

“Yes, your Highness,” Haggar said. She bowed to the prince as he rose, triumphant.

 

***     *     ***

 

A warm breeze blew up the plains from the sea, washing over the steps of the temple, over her skin, like the breath of the world. White hair tickling her cheeks in the wind, the young priestess sat on the steps and gazed out at the sunset. Twin moons rose in tandem from the jagged blue range of mountains along the coast.

 

"I thought I would find you here, Honerva," came a soft voice from the sparkling white archways of the temple.

 

She looked over her shoulder at the approach of the High Priestess, a woman with skin dark as rain-soaked soil. Her hair trailed in braids from her head to the ground, sweeping along with her gold-embroidered robes as she padded to the steps on bare feet. Honerva made to rise from the step, but the High Priestess stopped her with a raised hand.

 

"I will join you."

 

She sank beside Honerva, and the two Altean women basked in the light of sunset. The perfume of mountain juniberries drifted from the fields between shoreline and the foot of the mountain to the east. The sea of pink and green swayed in the breeze. In their silence, Honerva could just make out the distant sounds of drums and singing, of laughter and the crackle of fireworks carrying from the palace grounds far behind them.

 

"King Alfor's return has brought much joy to Altea," Honerva said. "Did another Paladin accompany him?"

 

The High Priestess did not shift her gaze from the glimmering, golden sea. "Yes," she said. "The Black Paladin, Prince Zarkon. There is much cause for celebration when hosting someone so prestigious."

 

The tension in the priestess's words was not lost on Honerva. The younger woman shifted on the step.

 

"Should we be attending the celebration?" Honerva said, paying more attention to flexing her toes on the step than to the expression that clouded the High Priestess's worn but gentle face.  

 

"No, child," the Priestess said, rising again to her feet. "I will go, but you may remain here. We must begin preparations for the blessing ritual early in the morning if Alfor is to leave safely for battle. I dreamt last night of a great storm brewing just beyond the mountains."

 

“A storm?” Honerva said. “Was it a vision?”

 

The High Priestess hummed, neither yes nor no. “Tomorrow, with clear eyes, I will see what the future holds for our king. Until then. Rest, Honerva.”

 

"Yes, Priestess," Honerva said, standing to exchange a bow of the head before the High Priestess returned through the temple arches.

 

The sun sank lower into the sea, burning the sky with red light. Suspended like a petal in zero gravity, Honerva stood on the edge of the temple steps, between sunlight and shadow. As evening fell, her facial markings--twin lines of vivid blue that outlined her high cheek bones, trailed down past her lips, and ended at her chin--glowed more noticeably than in day. Green eyes burned against dark skin.

 

She sensed him before she heard him. Steps approached from the lush gardens that surrounded the temple. Honerva turned, and her eyes met Zarkon's.

 

He stood tall and handsome in red and charcoal regalia, the high collar of his coat encircled with intricate strings of metal that boasted Altean craftsmanship. A gift from the king, she imagined. Draped across his shoulders like night over the mountains hung a heavy cloak. His face, the stark and alien planes unobscured by the Paladin helm, wore a particular mask of quiet affection that Honerva had come to know as _hers_. Honerva dipped into a bow before him, but she never lowered her gaze.

 

"Priestess," he spoke, a rumble in his throat. "I take it you received my correspondence."

 

He drew closer, and Honerva had to tilt her head back to look at him.

 

"Yes, your highness," she said, voice even despite the drumming of her heart.

 

He lifted a large hand to her cheek and drew the claw of his index finger along the glowing line of her marking. The touch sent lightning tingling across her skin.

 

"Are you not missed at the palace?" she asked, forcing concern into her voice but relishing in the knowledge that he had abandoned them all, even the king, for her company.

 

"The king and his advisors are plenty preoccupied with nunvill," he said with a low chuckle. "And I have business to attend to here."

 

"Do you?" she murmured as he ran the rough pad of his thumb over her bottom lip.

 

He hummed something like a yes, bowing his head to press his nose to her hair, inhaling.

 

"The time is coming," he said, the words dripping down Honerva's spine. "The reign of Altea will cede to a Galra empire. We will bring order to this chaotic universe. All because of you."

 

Body electric but soft with want, Honerva bent to his touch like a juniberry flower to wind. As one hand caressed her jaw, his other wrapped around her waist, pulling her close so that her body--so much smaller than his--was pressed flush against him. He nuzzled her neck, kissing, entreating her to tilt her head and make the smooth skin of her throat available to him. Her head fell back. The swiftly darkening sky filled her eyes as his tongue lapped up from the arch of her clavicle, along the fluttering vein in her neck, and into the hollow beneath her jaw.

 

Feeling almost too lightheaded to stand, Honerva's fingers tingled and grappled for a hold on his coat, gripped tight when they found purchase. She sighed his name like a prayer.

 

"Come," he said, pulling away to Honerva's displeasure.

 

Her sour expression mellowed as Zarkon pulled her toward the temple arches, the towering columns and lofty vaults welcoming them with deep shadow. They swept behind a pillar in the temple antechamber, where the smoke of incense effused from large hanging censers that glowed with blue light overhead. Zarkon lifted Honerva against the cold stone of the pillar and pressed his body between her knees. Her white robes fell open, and she wrapped her legs around his torso, kicking back his cloak so she could pull him tighter.

 

Her hands found his face, held him so that their eyes could drink each other in from such proximity.

 

"Will you give yourself to me?" Zarkon said, rough voice barely above a whisper, like sand shifting.

 

Honerva licked her lip, ran her fingers over the hard, familiar angles of his cheekbones and jaw, and said, "If I had more than one self to give, I would give it again"--she kissed his forehead--"and again"--she kissed his cheek--"and again."

 

She wrapped her arms around his neck and brought their mouths together.

 

Zarkon's tongue slipped between her teeth without hesitation. Honerva sighed into his mouth; sighed as she did the first time they exchanged a chaste and passing kiss beneath the lanterns of the Altean lunar festival; sighed as she did the first time they found each other in the palace’s garden maze and tore into each other like twin black holes. They had danced around one another so long that when they had finally drawn near, they could not help but devour the other whole.

 

Zarkon slipped his hands up from beneath Honerva’s smooth thighs to cup her ass, his sharp nails digging into flesh soft but firm as sun soaked clay. Honerva hissed against his mouth but made no attempt to control the rolling of her hips into his touch.

 

The Galra prince dropped his head to scatter tender kisses along her collarbone. Dissatisfied with the amount of skin available to him, he took the embroidered collar of her robes between his teeth and yanked the fabric aside, exposing not only the curve of her shoulder but her upper arm and left breast as the sleeve dropped by its own weight. He hummed with pleasure in the back of his throat and returned to the task of worshipping every hill and valley of Honerva’s skin he could access. 

 

Her head fell back against the cool stone of the pillar as he lavished a long, slow lick over her nipple and up the swell of her breast.

 

“Zarkon,” she said, breathless. “What happens…?”

 

His hands explored beneath her robes--she shivered and tensed as his thumb ran along the edge of her hipbone and ghosted against her cunt. He murmured into her neck, “Yes, my star?”

 

She blushed but persevered. “What happens come morning?”

 

He pulled away, studied her wordlessly.

 

"When I have..." 

 

"When you have killed the High Priestess," he said, quiet so that Honerva felt his voice in her chest more than heard it, "then this awful business will be done. Her foresight will no longer inhibit me from subduing Alfor and the other Paladins.”

 

Honerva held his yellow gaze, willing herself to confront the path laid out for her, a path obscure and winding and steep. The High Priestess had taught her, had sheltered her, had even loved her, Honerva knew. But Zarkon...he was the universe's future.

 

 _Her_ future.

 

"I know what I am asking of you," he said, something in his voice shifting, melting. "But you will be rewarded for it."

 

He bowed his head to return to his business of sucking a nebulous bruise from the skin of her throat, but Honerva clutched the thick fabric of his lapels to stop him.

 

"How," she said, setting her jaw. "How will you reward me?"

 

Zarkon's face could be so unreadable, chiseled and harsh as it was as though carved from stone. Honerva could not be sure if he was angry--or annoyed that he was being restrained from pleasure--but she held fast to him until he spoke.

 

"You will be given protection under the new Galra empire," Zarkon said, the words stumbling with hesitation by the end.

 

"I want more than that," Honerva said, but her confidence waned as the precariousness of her situation--and the insolence of her request--dawned on her. She burned from the pressure of the following silence. She felt his body tense between her legs.

 

"What then?" Zarkon spoke.

 

A gust of cool air rushed across the temple steps, whistled through the corridor of pillars, and swelled the folds of Zarkon's cloak. Drawing blue night down behind it like a shade, the sun sank fully below the sea, and the lovers stood submerged in darkness.

 

“Power,” Honerva finally spoke, her lips tingling around the word. “To rule alongside you.”

 

***     *     ***

 

When he and Haggar had entered the healing chamber, Prince Lotor all but ran on long, swift legs up the steps onto the platform overflowing with pipes and wires where his father lay bathed in light. Lotor's eyes darted over the emperor, hands hovering just above Zarkon’s body as though the he were afraid to touch and his fingers fall through a hologram. Haggar observed Lotor from several steps behind. A strange wave of sensation washed over her like a cold sea.

 

"How long?" Lotor said.

 

"Pardon me, your Highness?" Haggar said, drawing to his side.

 

The prince peered down at the emperor who lied motionless as stone. Orbs of pink light emanated from Zarkon’s cracked and ashen skin, floating like snow falling in reverse.

 

"How long has he been like this?" Lotor said. Finally, he lowered a hand to clasp his father's arm.

 

“Since well before you arrived, your Highness,” she said. “His condition has not worsened, but he has not demonstrated any signs of consciousness since his battle with the Paladins.”

 

Unlike his father--who had both a natural inclination toward stoicism and had taken care to measure his expression lest weakness be found in the twitch of the jaw or furrow of the brow--Lotor wore his emotions like war paint. Rather than the curl of his lip or flickering of pain in his eyes render him vulnerable, the wild openness of his face left no doubt of what he was capable.

 

“They did this to him,” he murmured, moving his hand to caress the scales decorating his father’s cheek bone. Lotor’s eyelashes fluttered, hair falling over his face and shoulders as he tilted his head in a tableau of peculiar tenderness. “I will ensure that they suffer.”

 

Haggar watched as Lotor knelt beside the emperor, the prince’s touch affectionate and trembling as his long hair poured over the emperor’s barely moving chest.

 

“Is that what you want, father?” Lotor said, baring his teeth. “For me to punish the Paladins? Would that please you?”

 

Lotor lowered his head to rest it on his father’s chest, shoulders bowed as though to wind or cold. This close to Zarkon, Lotor was enveloped in the same pink light, the Quintessence bright in the cascade of his white hair, warm and soft on his contorted face. The prince’s robe had slipped loose, one sleeve sagging to reveal the muscular curve of a shoulder--a shoulder decorated with the crescent scar of a bite mark. 

 

Inside Haggar’s heart, something burst, vivid and excruciating. Points of light ignited across her chest like a nursery of stars at the heart of a dark nebula.

 

“Father…” she heard the prince say.

 

_What emotion is this?_

 

Lotor clutched at his father’s robes. “Father…is that what you want from me?”

 

_The young prince hadn’t shown up to his lessons--had been distracted and scarce for quite some time--so Haggar went in search for him. Haggar called out Lotor's name, worry rising acidic and unbidden in her throat._

 

_Are you rage?_

 

“I’ll kill them,” Lotor said, repeating the words like a mantra, like a prayer. “I’ll kill them. I’ll kill them. I’ll kill--”

 

_Honerva stood above the sleeping High Priestess, the cool light of Altea’s twin moons flooding through the window, soaking her skin and hair._

 

_“A throne is a heavy burden,” Zarkon had said. “And a hefty request.”_

 

_Honerva trembled, adrenaline pulsing through her as she reached her hands out, suspended just above the High Priestess’s throat._

 

_You must be rage._

 

Limbs stiff and immovable as stone, Haggar stood frozen as Lotor held his father and began to weep. Tears flooded over beneath white eyelashes, catching the pink light and glittering like a meteor shower down his face.

 

_The wet pummel of knuckles into flesh resounded in the corridor, each fist-fall punctuated with an exhalation. Soft like a sigh. Haggar rounded the corner._

 

_Rage._

 

Haggar discovered her limbs again, sense returning to her body in increments like lights flickering on across a control panel.

 

Fingers: on. Hand: on. Arm: on.

 

She began to back away from Lotor and Zarkon. She had to leave. She couldn’t stand the sight of them, of the prince groveling for his father’s love.

 

_“Do you doubt my power?” Honerva had said, gripping tighter to Zarkon’s coat._

 

_“No, my star,” he said. “You are powerful; I would not entrust this task to you were you not. But I have many allies across the universe.”_

 

_Rage._

 

Had Zarkon been awake, Lotor’s pleas would have made no difference. The prince was more useful galaxies away, on the front, trapped in a limbo between shame and death. Lotor had already failed his father. Haggar had failed them both.

 

_“Haggar,” her name escaped Lotor’s bloodied lips. Pain flickered across his face--a lightning storm when viewed above a planet’s atmosphere._

 

_Rage._

 

“Haggar?” Lotor’s voice cracked around the name. He lifted his head from his father’s chest, strands of white hair sticking to his wet cheeks and lips. His brow furrowed as he watched her back away and hurry down the steps to avoid his gaze.

 

_A white aura surrounded Honerva’s fingers, spread across her hands like frost on the surface of a lake. She wrapped her fingers around the High Priestess’s throat._

 

_Then the Priestess opened her eyes._

 

_No. You are not rage._

 

“Haggar, where--what are you doing? Where are you going?” Lotor said.

 

_“Honerva,” the Priestess whispered. No fear, no anger, just understanding. Honerva hesitated, wondered if the Priestess had suspected her collusion with Zarkon, had anticipated this betrayal. Her cheeks blooming with heat, eyes stinging, Honerva tightened her grip._

 

_The aura enveloped the Priestess’s neck, flooded her mouth, and suffocated her._

 

_You are heartbreak._

 

“Don’t turn your back on me!” Lotor roared. “I did not dismiss you!”

 

_“He called me ‘Altean jail-bait,'” Lotor said. "I'm not sure what he meant."_

 

_Honerva grit her teeth and said, “Forgive me.”_

 

_A tear welled from Lotor’s eye and grew heavy with the dead commander's blood as it fell._

 

Lotor staggered onto unsteady legs and stumbled off the platform, robe in disarray, his face flushed and glistening. Haggar stopped, turned to him. She could see he was fighting to maintain the fire of his fury, but something had shattered inside him too. They stood there, aeons apart, actually looking at each other for the first time from across an impassable distance of memory. Lotor appeared, suddenly, so young. His face was open as a wound.

 

Haggar remembered the first time she took him to the royal observatory, the wonder on his face as he peered into the scope at the technicolor blossom of a nebula.

 

She remembered the first time Lotor attempted offensive magic only to fling himself onto his rear and lay there on the floor, a little winded, but laughing. The sound had been bright and warm as planetary summer.

 

She remembered the first time Lotor came to his lessons with a bruise peeking out from his collar. The first time she saw him nestle close to Zarkon’s cape, tiny hand gripping on, and Zarkon rested his large armored hand atop his head. The first time she held him, small and wailing in her arms, and pressed her lips to the tufts of pale hair curling from his head.

 

The first time he returned from battle, speechless. The first time she couldn't say goodbye.

 

Lotor waited for her to speak.

 

“You are stronger than this, your Highness,” Haggar said. “Do not weep for him.”

 

She turned away and strode toward the door, her chest imploding under its own weight.

 

“Haggar!” Lotor called. “Wait--”

 

His voice echoed in the chamber, but she did not--could not--return to him. Not yet. Lotor was stronger than he allowed himself to be; she could not say the same for herself.

 

_“What can you offer in exchange for the place to rule beside me?" Zarkon said._

 

_Honerva measured her breath then spoke:_

 

_"I can give you an heir."_

 

***     *     ***

 

“Haggar, did you know my mother?”

 

Haggar looked up from the holographic map sprawled out across the surface of the floor, both her and the young prince’s faces uplit by the purple glow of billions of simulated stars. Lotor was perched on the edge of the semicircular control panel behind Haggar. His knees were pulled up to his chin, gaze not directed at the Druid but at his hand, which was raised, fingers undulating as pale tendrils of energy curled around them. Their most recent lesson in magic had been concerned with the materialization of energy and object manipulation; Lotor had been dazzled by the idea of creating something out of nothing.

 

“I did know her,” Haggar said, returning her attention to the map.

 

She heard him leap down from his perch and pad over to her side. He rocked back and forth on his heels as he glanced between his mentor and the pool of stars.

 

“Could she perform magic too?” Lotor said.

 

“Why do you ask that?”

 

“Well,” Lotor began. “I sat with Cornelius in the mess hall today, and I told him about my lessons, but when I asked if he was taking lessons for magic he looked at me like--like I had an Altean head or something!

 

“So I--” Lotor’s voice softened. “I was just wondering. I know my father needs you for his magic, so I figured…”

 

Haggar made herself busy zooming in on a galaxy cluster with a gesture and said, “Yes. She could perform magic.”

 

“Wow,” Lotor breathed, a wide smile brightening his face. He shook out his hand and the energy dispersed like smoke. He occupied himself instead with braiding a thick strand of hair, expression dreamy.

 

“What was she like, Haggar? I bet she was pretty.”

 

Moving her hands over the map to shift the focal coordinates to another sector, Haggar said, “I believe your father thought so once.”

 

“Haggar?”

 

At his shift in tone, she stopped manipulating the map and gave him her attention. “Yes, your highness?”

 

With his face more clearly lit by the star map, she could see the sadness in his expression, only softened by the remnants of his smile. “Do you think she’d be proud of me? I’m getting stronger, and--and Father says he wants me to undergo combat training soon--”

 

He stopped at the weight of Haggar’s hand on his shoulder. Their heads were bowed together above the brilliant panorama of the known universe. Innumerable stars and planets and lifeforms, represented by tiny points of light, illumined their wary but expectant faces.

 

“She would be proud of you, Lotor,” Haggar said. “I am.”

  
  



End file.
